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N. R. E. Fisher

Hubris, intentionally dishonouring behaviour, was a powerful term of moral condemnation in ancient Greece; and in Athens, and perhaps elsewhere, it was also treated as a serious crime. The common use ...
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Hubris, intentionally dishonouring behaviour, was a powerful term of moral condemnation in ancient Greece; and in Athens, and perhaps elsewhere, it was also treated as a serious crime. The common use of hubris in English to suggest pride, over-confidence, or alternatively any behaviour which offends divine powers, rests, it is now generally held, on misunderstanding of ancient texts, and concomitant and over-simplified views of Greek attitudes to the gods have lent support to many doubtful, and often over-Christianizing, interpretations, above all of Greek tragedy.The best ancient discussion of hubris is found in *Aristotle's Rhetoric: his definition is that hubris is ‘doing and saying things at which the victim incurs shame, not in order that one may achieve anything other than what is done, but simply to get pleasure from it. For those who act in return for something do not commit hubris, they avenge themselves. The cause of the pleasure for those committing hubris is that by harming people, they think themselves superior; that is why the young and the rich are hubristic, as they think they are superior when they commit hubris’ (Rh.Less

Simon Hornblower

For most Greek states our evidence is too poor and patchy for us to be able to say much. We know a little about 5th-cent. bce Athens. Sir K. Popper famously praised it as an ‘open society’ but the ...
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For most Greek states our evidence is too poor and patchy for us to be able to say much. We know a little about 5th-cent. bce Athens. Sir K. Popper famously praised it as an ‘open society’ but the tolerance of that society had limits. There is some evidence for literary censorship, though of a haphazard and perhaps ineffective sort. *Phrynichus(1) got into trouble near the beginning of the century for putting on a *tragedy dealing with a sensitive political topic (Hdt. 6.21). Between 440 and 437 bce there were formal restrictions on ridicule in theatrical comedy (Fornara no. 111 with the important discussion of ‘political censorship’ at DFA3 364; cf. comedy (greek), old, § 4). On the other hand there were (Dover and Stone) no ‘witch-hunts’ against intellectuals, though *Anaxagoras and other associates of *Pericles(1) were prosecuted in the courts. Anaxagoras' ostensible offence was impiety, and the decree of *Diopeithes, if historical, would provide hard evidence for public control of religious teaching.Less